Glutton Inhales Wendy’s Spoon Tip; No Lawsuit Planned Yet

RALEIGH, N.C. – Doctors say a North Carolina man who was plagued with coughing fits should be OK now that they have removed a 1-inch piece of plastic from his lung, where it had rested since he apparently inhaled it nearly two years ago while sucking down a soft drink at a Wendy’s restaurant.

Inhale your food much?

Laboratory tests have reconstructed the drinking technique used in this incident.

Doctors at Duke University Medical Center say the plastic fragment of an eating utensil — with the Wendy’s logo still legible on the side — was likely to blame for the coughing, fatigue and pneumonia spells that plagued John Manley for almost two years.

They pulled the fast-food foreign object from Manley’s left lung during a Sept. 10 surgery. The 50-year-old Wilmington resident said he probably inhaled it while gulping a drink from Wendy’s.

“I like to take big gulps of drink,” the former home remodeler said. “I don’t know of any other ways of it getting in there.”

Reports that he also eats with a snow shovel remain uncomfirmed.

Manley’s case eventually came to the attention of Dr. Momen Wahidi, director of interventional pulmonology at Duke. Wahidi, who mostly works with cancer patients to remove tumors from their lung airways, told Manley he would try extracting the object using a rigid bronchoscope. The procedure would allow Wahidi to insert a camera and other instruments to examine and remove the mystery object.

Wahidi said he still remembers his staff’s amazement in the operating room when they pulled it out. “We’re looking at it and realizing that there are letters on it … We started reading out loud, ‘A-M-B-U-R-G-E-R,’ and realized it spelled, ‘hamburgers.’ “Everybody was shocked. We had no clue why something that said, ‘hamburgers’ would be in someone’s lung,” he said. They had read a side of the plastic that spelled Wendy’s motto of “Old Fashioned Hamburgers.”

Wahidi said foreign objects in the lungs are much more common in children, but he’s extracted false teeth, nails, and even a peanut from adult’s lungs who have held the items in their mouth and accidentally sucked them in. Patients often don’t realize there’s a problem until their bodies begin to react.

But Wahidi said the piece of plastic was a first. “It’s definitely one of the weirdest things I’ve removed in my career,” he said.

I could discuss things I’ve seen on x-rays up people’s butts in the E.R., but I doubt I could top this.

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[…] Glutton Inhales Wendy’s Spoon Tip; No Lawsuit Planned Yet « Alamo City Pundit jdlong.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/glutton-inhales-wendys-spoon-tip-no-lawsuit-planned-yet – view page – cached RALEIGH, N.C. – Doctors say a North Carolina man who was plagued with coughing fits should be OK now that they have removed a 1-inch piece of plastic from his lung, where it had rested since he apparently inhaled it nearly two years ago while sucking down a soft drink at a Wendy’s — From the page […]